Ever since we launched ibLE, we’ve been a remote company. We’ve never known it to be any other way. Our team of virtual experts span across multiple countries in different time zones with varying lifestyles. So, how do we keep a team feeling like a team when we don’t see each other every day?
For those of you who aren’t familiar, Slack is a private, channel-based messaging platform for your company. It’s less formal than email, but more professional than WhatsApp or Facebook. You can use it to ask those quick-to-answer questions, check in on your teammates or share ideas for that project you’re all working on. As a team, we use it every single day.
On top of its channels and private messaging functions, you can also connect services and tools to Slack. This opens up a whole host of possibilities to improve all areas of your business — including company culture.
Here are 11 of the Slack apps that we use to feel like a team, no matter where we are.
Karl
At its core, company culture is about making your people feel appreciated. That’s what the Karl app for Slack is here to do.
Karl makes it super easy to give kudos and keep track of people in your team who go above and beyond. It isn’t just for managers either — every person can give kudos for even the smallest of wins (which is really rather nice).
Random Coffee
There are people who work at the same company (most likely a very large company) who have never even met. This app aims to solve that by pairing random team members up for a coffee that week (real, or virtual).
What we like about this one over other similar apps is that it doesn’t try to book a timeslot for you. It simply pairs you up with someone that week and you can work out when it fits into your schedule.
Birthday Bot
As any good virtual assistant will tell you, it’s all in the details. Birthday Bot helps you keep track of all the birthdays in your team — which gives you a reminder to wish them a great day, send a card or even a thoughtful gift.
Officevibe
It can be really difficult to get a sense of how your team is feeling when you’re not in an office together. Officevibe sends weekly surveys to measure how your team’s getting on that week. This is huge for mental health and keeping an engaged team.
Similarly to apps like Butterfly and Moodbit, Officevibe gives your team the option to answer anonymously. However, we think Officevibe is more effective as you can ask specific questions, where the others seem to simply gather a general mood.
Icebreakers
How to make a Slack channel feel more like a community? Give everyone something fun to talk about. Icebreakers randomly selects a member of your team and asks them to answer an interesting question about themselves. Their answer is posted in the community channel of your choice and everyone gets to know each other a little more.
Jukebot
If you haven’t built an ‘Almost the Weekend’ playlist with your team, we’re afraid you’re missing out. Jukebot connects to Spotify and allows everyone to add a few songs to your collaborative playlist. You’d be surprised by some of the fantastic (and awful) music tastes you’ll discover.
GreetBot
A study by Glassdoor showed that a strong onboarding process can improve team retention by up to 82%. What could be a better start than a warm welcome from the team? This handy bot notifies everyone that there’s a new person on board and asks them to come and say hello in a chosen Slack channel.
Such a simple concept that can make a huge difference to someone’s first impressions of working with your company.
Polly
A quick way to gather company-wide opinions without needing to set up a different form, or message everyone individually? Count us in! Here are some ideas on how to use the fantastic Polly app:
- What should we do for our Christmas celebration? Vote now.
- We have designs a,b,c and d — which one do you like best?
- What could we do to make our onboarding process better?
- What line do you think best describes our company?
What we really love about this app is that you can easily get your team involved with business decisions. This makes them feel heard and appreciated. The best ideas can come from just giving people a platform and this app helps to spark more collaborative thinking.
Aloha
A Slack app that teaches your new team members how to use Slack for your company — how meta? For us, this is what automation is all about. You can update your Aloha messages, set community guidelines and get people off on the right foot from day one.
Giphy & Meme Bot
Sometimes words just don’t cover it. And for those times, there’s Giphy and Meme Bot. Two silly apps for injecting a little bit of humor into the everyday conversations of your team.
Want to make Slack work for your business?
Our virtual experts can help to get you all set up and find new, useful apps that can make Slack a hub for company culture, processes and operations. It’s all there for you to build and we can make it happen. Register for an ibLE expert now.
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